Friday, October 21, 2011

Sous Vide Salmon @ 50c for 28mins

It's difficult to get your head round the science of cooking sometimes. When I suggested to Emma that we could do fish in the Sous Vide machine she was surprised. I was even more confused when I first heard of sous vide. I understood the vac packing part, as I'd studied hygiene, but the temperature vs time aspect confused me. I was once asked what I thought of a machine that could not only cook perfect poached or boiled eggs, but could also hold them at the perfect temperature for hours through a service! 'Sounds dodgy' I said, but I didn't know why.
After the success of the tougher cuts of meat I was a little apprehensive about fish, even though I understand temperature vs time much better after having used it in a much more controlled way. I decided to go quite cool, 50c for 28mins. I found this formula on fiftysixdegrees.com, although the author wanted to go lower. He was talking about how he wanted it to look translucent, almost raw.
After cooking I thought that it did look quite raw, maybe too raw? It was very fragile too. It didn't really flake like normal salmon.
It tasted fantastic though, much smoother than usual cooked salmon, almost smoked salmon texture.
I think that maybe the fiftysixdegrees.com dude was right, you could go lower, maintain a firmer consistency and maybe flash it in a hot pan to add some colour and flavour? Next time I'll do 45c for 30mins then blast it in a hot pan for a few seconds.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.